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Wondrous Love revisited

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Early in the life of More to Come, I wrote a post on the old Southern Harmony tune Wondrous Love, which sits right at the top of the list of my favorite songs, no matter the genre. Written with a melody that sounds both traditional and modern, one that sticks deep in the soul, the song is about God’s unending love, redemption, and the eternal nature of music. Yet you don’t have to ascribe to the belief to be moved by the music. As one commentor wrote on a popular You Tube version…

Speaking here as an unashamed agnostic… This is a lovely, dignified, decorous and beautifully restrained music.

To which I can only add, Amen.

Last fall I featured Wayfaring Stranger, another of my favorite Southern Harmony tunes, and shared a number of remarkable arrangements by musicians ranging from Johnny Cash to Emmylou, from Rhiannon Giddens to Jack White, from Tiff Merritt to Maria McKee. While it hasn’t been covered by quite the range of musicians, I want to do the same with Wondrous Love. As we did with the earlier piece, we’ll begin with the Sacred Harp arrangements.

What wondrous love is this, O my soul, O my soul!
What wondrous love is this, O my soul!
What wondrous love is this that caused the Lord of bliss
to bear the dreadful curse for my soul, for my soul,
to bear the dreadful curse for my soul!

The first is a standard interpretation by a Texas Shape Note convention singing in the old style, while the second is the group Anonymous 4, with a lovely and not quite as strident shape note version. On occasion, before they broke up in 2015, Anonymous 4 “left the Middle Ages behind to focus on early American vocal styles, including shape-note singing and folk songs.” This rendition is from one of those albums.

The Texas version has some word changes in the first verse (i.e., “to send this precious peace to my soul” as opposed to the more familiar “to bear the dreadful curse for my soul”) which you can hear in the second. *

Several different verses make appearances in these arrangements, but the traditional ones I’ve heard most of my life have included the first verse above and this second verse:

When I was sinking down, sinking down, sinking down,
when I was sinking down, sinking down,
when I was sinking down beneath God’s righteous frown,
Christ laid aside his crown for my soul, for my soul,
Christ laid aside his crown for my soul.

The St. Olaf Choir’s video of the tune, arranged by Robert Scholz, is one you may hear often in traditional churches. To my ears, it is a lovely arrangement but misses some of the grit of the folk and traditional versions.

Deborah Liv Johnson has a more traditional folk interpretation of the song, although I’m not fond of her word change in the final verse to “I’ll sing His love for me.” It sounds a little too modern to my ears. Her voice is lovely, however, and the historical photo montage speaks to the challenges of living in this world that are implied in the song.

The Texas Sacred Harp version above had a final verse that I’d never heard before.

Ye friends of Zion’s king, join the praise, join the praise / Ye friends of Zion’s king, join the praise / Ye friends of Zion’s king, with hearts and voices sing, / and strike each tuneful string in his praise, in his praise! / and strike each tuneful string in his praise!

I do want to say that I’m actually quite fond of the line “and strike each tuneful string.” I may have to begin incorporating that verse!

Which brings me around to showcase two of my favorite traditional interpretations. The first is by banjo master Bill Evans playing with vocalist Suzanne Thomas. It is simple but so moving. Following an innovative but spare instrumental interlude by Evans, Thomas nails the third verse, which leads directly into the powerful imagery of the finish.

To God and to the Lamb I will sing, I will sing;
to God and to the Lamb I will sing;
to God and to the Lamb, who is the great I AM,
while millions join the theme, I will sing, I will sing,
while millions join the theme, I will sing.

The final verse, which not all the traditional versions include, is my favorite. I love the image of being free from death to sing through eternity. As I wrote in 2008, I think of it often and I always think of my mother, who gave me my love of music but died much too young:

And when from death I’m free I’ll sing on I’ll sing on
And when from death I’m free I’ll sing on
And when from death I’m free I’ll sing and joyful be
And through eternity I’ll sing on, I’ll sing on
And through eternity I’ll sing on

My favorite interpretation of the song (but it doesn’t have to be yours) remains the acapella Blue Highway rendition. Following a short mandolin intro, the voices take over and build upon each other verse after verse. I especially enjoy how they return to repeat the first verse as a round. Through the years I have seen how their live version has moved audiences, and I hope you’ll enjoy it here.

Wondrous love. Enjoy!

More to come…

DJB

*As noted in the comments to another shape note singing, “the first time through is sung using solfege. Each voice part is singing not the words but rather the names of the scale, la, sol, do. Even more important is that the music they are reading from is written using shape notes. Each tone of the scale has a corresponding note head shape. (re = cup, mi = diamond, fa = flag etc.) A person can see the shape of the note and know what note to sing based on the shape. Since you learned the notes on the first read thru because you sang the solfege, now in the second time thru you can sing the words!”

Mysterious forest from pixabay

Resilience through the centuries

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There are many different places one can search for answers to the questions surrounding America’s 20th century misadventures in Southeast Asia. Perhaps a surprising source is a tale of resistance and resilience, passed down over two millennia, that is vividly recounted in a gripping new historical novel of ancient Vietnam.

Bronze Drum (2022) by Phong Nguyen brings to life a true story of two sisters who rise up to lead an army of women, overthrow their hated colonizers. and create an independent nation. Their resistance, which was ultimately defeated by those colonizers, the Han Chinese, nonetheless reflects a fierce desire for independence that the Vietnamese never forgot. Both the French and Americans learned about that desire first-hand almost 2,000 years later.

The story in Bronze Drum covers the years from 36 to 43 CE. We begin with the introduction of Trưng Trắc and Trưng Nhị, two noble women of Mê Linh — a feudal state within the kingdom of Lạc Việt that corresponds to present day Hanoi. The sisters train, study, and work to stay true to Vietnamese traditions, with its strong matriarchal bent. They are also different sides of the same coin. Trưng Trắc is “disciplined and wise, always excelling in her duty,” while Trưng Nhị “is fierce and free spirited, more concerned with spending time in the gardens and with lovers.”

As the critic and Woodlawn-Pope Leighy 2020 writer-in-residence Thúy Đinh notes in a review, (*)

Nguyen combines meticulous historical research with cinematic immediacy to illustrate the cultural chasm between Han and Lạc Việt worldviews. The Chinese imposition of a tightly controlled patriarchal system directly conflicts with the natives’ matriarchal model giving women the freedom to inherit property, have multiple partners, and form flexible family arrangements.

The novel’s title also alludes to the Đông Sơn culture in Vietnam’s Red River Delta, an advanced Bronze Age civilization that produced bronze drums with concentric carvings of animals, sea birds, vivid scenes of maritime exploits, and daily life. These bronze drums, when orchestrated to produce a series of coded rhythms for battle formations, represent the sisters’ most ingenious weapons against the Chinese invaders.

When their father is executed, the sisters’ world comes crashing down around them. However, rather than submit to the Han Chinese, they rally an army of Viet women and win an initial victory, driving the Han from their homeland. The sisters become co-kings and rule over their independent state. Unlike many of their male counterparts then and now, however, these clear-eyed Southeast Asian women “understand the cost of war and the fraught legacy of peace,” as Thúy Đinh notes. “The sisters’ short-lived quest for independence actually brings on nine centuries of direct Chinese rule, but also heralds Vietnam’s spirit of resistance that persists through the millennia.” At a critical juncture in the story, Nguyen — channeling the work of Toni Morrison and Viet Thanh Nguyen — has the sisters assert that “nothing ever dies,” affirming that the memory and the retelling of their story will be imprinted on the culture’s collective memory.

Bronze Drum is a terrific book on multiple levels. The writing is lively, the descriptions vivid, and the story full of surprises and insights, especially to a westerner who has not heard the tale from childhood. Objects and phrases take on multiple meanings. Most importantly, it shows how a country’s history can be shaped by memory, and the telling and retelling of the stories of the past, until it becomes integral to the present.

More to come…

DJB

*This is a local residency program at Woodlawn & Pope-Leighey House — a National Trust Historic Site — and Arcadia Center for Sustainable Food and Agriculture. The summer writers-in-residence focus their weeks on-site exploring ways to rediscover and re-purpose place and place histories, and use writing as a means to build community, to bring awareness to critical social and environmental issues, and as a creative force of empowerment.

This Weekly Reader features links to recent articles, blog posts, or books that grabbed my interest or tickled my fancy. I hope you find something that makes you laugh, think, or cry. 

Image by Quang Nguyen vinh from Pixabay

An odd-shaped piece that never quite fit into society’s jigsaw puzzle

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Every morning I walk by one of our community’s strangest memorials. I’ve looked at it and read the plaque for years, but recently I have been thinking about what it means in the larger context of our polarization and the government’s takeover by corporate interests.

The memorial is a bust of a street-dependent person, Norman Lane, who lived from 1911 to 1987 and spent the last 25 years of his life in downtown Silver Spring. Known as the “Mayor of Silver Spring,” he was born into a prominent DC family, but his mother, who had TB, died giving birth to him, resulting in problems with his own health his entire life. Norman ran away from school at age six and grew up an outcast, working at odd jobs. The plaque below the bust, entitled Remember the loving kindhearted forbearance of the people of Silver Spring, describes him as an odd-shaped piece that never quite fit into society’s jigsaw puzzle.

Norman was the picture of misery. Often wearing his shoes on the wrong feet, his rumpled clothes hung off of his 90 pound frame like a scarecrow. He looked like a gargoyle peering out from under a hard hat. After returning to the DC area, he spent the winter of 1966 in Glenmont, sleeping in the fire department coal bin. The spring he wandered down Georgia Avenue.

In Silver Spring he found a home. The Phillips family set up a cot for him in the back of their autobody shop. For 25 years Norman lived in that back alley garage, which was directly behind this statue. It was the only real home he ever knew. After his death, Norman’s alley, “Mayor Lane” was named for him. Silver Spring’s business community, the shoppers, the police and fire departments were his family. They accepted his drinking, his coarse manners and came to love his quirky, Tom Sawyer sense of humor.

“Don’t worry ’bout it” was Norman’s answer to everything. As our “Mayor” made his rounds, he generously shared a bit of his permanent vacation with us work-a-day shut-ins. He owned nothing. He shambled through these streets, happily living out our worst fears for us. After seeing Norman, we really “didn’t worry about it” quite so much. Fridays were his big day. He retrieved armloads of flowers from the flower shops’ trash and passed out bouquets to the ladies (Norman loved the ladies). His weathered, toothless face look like a rusty ax stuck in the midst of those brightly-colored flowers.

One day he put out his last cigarette in his last beer and just like that he quit. But the truth is he wasn’t much different sober. Silver Spring’s loving care allowed Norman to live out his life on his own terms. Silver Spring’s finest hour lasted 25 years.

I didn’t know Norman Lane. We moved to Silver Spring in 2000, when the city was still struggling to come out of the economic doldrums that hit many inner-ring suburbs during that period. But as I’ve walked through downtown almost every day since my retirement from full-time work, I’ve seen change that makes me think of Norman.

I’ve watched the new construction rising, the reliance on “public-private” partnerships to do the work that the community should be undertaking, the changing diversity that has long been a hallmark of Silver Spring, the ongoing privatization of public space, and the struggles of those who were called “essential” workers during the pandemic but who feel “bruised and beaten by years of promises unkept, real wages and benefits cut, and jobs eliminated.”

Most importantly, I have watched the impact of a 40-year government experiment to push those who don’t quite fit into our jigsaw puzzle out into the streets and out of mind.

On my morning walk, I usually see two gentlemen — about my age — who have found themselves in tough circumstances yet still keep a bright outlook on life and the things that matter. I’ve written here and here about Gilbert America Carter (who goes by Carter) and Barrington Harold Fair (who goes by Barry). Carter and Barry always have a smile and often have stories and quips to share with those around them.

For roughly three hours each morning, Carter and Barry are Silver Spring’s ambassadors at the Whole Foods parking lot. They share subsidized housing in a nearby apartment, but both are disabled and depend on the kindness of strangers to help them make it through the day. Carter and Barry sit in their walkers, unobtrusive but within eyesight of everyone who heads into the store. They never ask for money, but many who pass give them cash or provide various articles of clothing or other everyday items that we take for granted, but which they would not have without the generosity of those who see them every day. Some of us also buy a piece of cornbread when we can, which Carter uses to feed “his” birds.

Carter feeds his birds each morning

While most of the security guards, Whole Foods employees, police and neighborhood residents like me know and enjoy checking in on Carter and Barry, recently a new management team for the downtown developer (one of our public-private partnerships) has decided that they cannot allow Carter and Barry to sit at their posts by the Whole Foods lot. Since this is Washington, Barry knows a couple of attorneys who stop by regularly to chat. They’ve stepped in to see what can be done, and for now the situation seems to be addressed.

It strikes me that “forbearance” is one of the key words in Norman Lane’s tribute, the forbearance of the people and leaders of Silver Spring of the time to someone rough around the edges, who is dealing with issues often not of their own making and exacerbated by our harsh policies to “punish” those perceived as “takers.” The push to favor the wealthy and business owners over the working class and the poor has been part of our country’s history since its founding. How we treat those less fortunate than us and the forbearance we show ebbs and flows with the times. Beginning with the Reagan revolution in 1981, our federal government decided to stop providing housing and treatment to millions of fellow citizens like Barry and Carter. Some of that we turned over to the private sector, with predictably disastrous results. But many of us just turned our eyes away…unless and until we were forced to face the humanity of those just like us in so many respects.

The top 0.1% is working hard to obscure the fact that it is in the best interest of 90% of Americans to seek out what Heather McGhee has called a solidarity dividend that supports workers and those who need a hand. To achieve their goal, those at the top want us to forget that these individuals are human beings: real, breathing, loving people, striving to advance — or just make it — and meet their own American dream.

The late Senator Paul Wellstone once put it so well: “We all do better when we all do better.”

We can all do better, with some more forbearance.

More to come…

DJB

UPDATE: Several readers sent emails, Facebook and Linked-in messages, or called to say how much they appreciated this post. One neighbor said she chats with Carter and Barry and was worried when she hadn’t seen them recently.

This morning, Carter was playing Otis Redding CDs on his portable player, and people were coming by and dancing. We started talking about the disc jockey who was famous for playing R&B and Soul music, and Carter said, “You mean Wolfman Jack?” I mentioned to Barry that Carter was the “Wolfman of Whole Foods”, and he immediately gave a pitch-perfect impersonation of that famous voice. That’s what you get with some forbearance.

Just rattle your jewelry

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The news of Queen Elizabeth II’s passing this week brought back a reminder of John Lennon‘s wickedly funny commentary when the Beatles played their Royal Command performance in 1963 after receiving their MBEs.

The Beatles‘ accomplishments didn’t go unnoticed by the royal family after the better part of two years as Britain’s greatest musical ambassadors. On Oct. 26, 1965, all four members went to Buckingham Palace to receive their Member of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire medals from Queen Elizabeth II.

Queen Elizabeth wasn’t at the performance itself, but the Queen Mother was and her reaction to John’s comment at the 15 second mark is priceless.

Twist and Shout had nothing to do with the royal family, but the little snippet that Paul McCartney titled Her Majesty, found at the end of the Abbey Road album, was about Elizabeth II, one of several Beatles tunes to reference the Queen. The others include Penny Lane, Mean Mr. Mustard, and For You Blue.

McCartney did sing Her Majesty for the Queen at the “Party at the Palace” concert in 2002 celebrating her Golden Jubilee.

Here’s how the website Rocking in the Norselands describes the performance:

In 2002, McCartney was due to headline the ‘Party At The Palace’ concert celebrating the Queen’s Golden Jubilee. Before the band came on, Paul appeared alone with an acoustic guitar and played Her Majesty. It had rarely been performed before so this was a surprising, if somewhat fitting, occasion. “I’m sorry, but I just had to do it” he said, addressing the Queen from stage.

And apparently, McCartney and the Queen got along very well.

Macca and the Queen have met several times and seem to have a good rapport. During one of their meets, the Queen famously once said “We have many Beatles records at home.” Paul responded “That’s great! I have many Queen records at home too!” The Queen laughed quite heartily at this.

May Queen Elizabeth II rest in peace.

More to come…

DJB

H/T to a diarist from the Daily Kos with the reminder of this event.

Image: The Beatles receive their MBEs

More ‘toons

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In August, I posted The ‘toons, a selection of political cartoons on issues of the day. I have been a long-time consumer of political cartoons, those 1-4 panel commentaries which touch a more visceral spot in the brain. As I said at the time, during this political season I’ll occasionally post a few of my favorites to help keep my sanity.

In that spirit, here are selections from the past 2-3 weeks under the imaginatively titled More ‘toons. I suspect they will make you laugh, think, and/or cry.

Or get mad.

The pandemic effects

President Biden calls out the MAGA Republicans

The Republican playbook

Perhaps THIS should be the Republican playbook

The Trump playbook

The Trump legacy

I can see Russia from here

A caption, waiting for a cartoon

Finally, this is not a cartoon. However, the caption is already written if someone wants to draw it.

Enjoy!

More to come…

DJB

The image of the cartoonist’s desk is from The Comics Journal, which posted an essay excerpted from the introduction to Jeff Danziger’s book, The Conscience of a Cartoonist: Instructions, Observations, Criticisms, Enthusiasms. 

The books I read in August 2022

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Each month my goal is to read five books on a variety of topics and from different genres. I read in order to learn and to start conversations with readers and others I encounter along the way. Here are the books I read in August 2022. If you click on the title, you’ll go to the longer post on More to Come. Enjoy!

The American Spirit

The American Spirit (2017) is a collection of fifteen speeches given by David McCullough over twenty-five years. There are a number of commencement speeches, a talk made before Congress, and a July 4th naturalization speech given at Monticello, among others. I returned to reread this volume after hearing of McCullough’s passing on August 7th, as I was reminded of a speech he made in October 2001 and of one of the most memorable personal interactions I had with the late historian, at an especially difficult time in our country’s history. A sense of history, he wrote, “is an antidote to self-pity and self-importance…history is a lesson in proportions.”

The Great Passion (2022) by James Runcie, is “a meditation on grief and music” as imagined through the writing of one of the greatest masterpieces of Baroque sacred music, J.S. Bach’s St. Matthew Passion. The narrator of this historical novel set in 1726-27 is thirteen-year-old Stefan Silbermann, who is sent away to school in Leipzig after the death of his mother. Following a few rough initial weeks, young Silbermann is taken under the wing of the school’s cantor, Johann Sebastian Bach, and his life changes forever. Runcie uses the voices and thoughts of Silbermann, Bach, and his family to teach us how music speaks to grief while capturing, in a very imaginative way, what it must have been like to “sing, play, and hear Bach’s music for the very first time.”

One Person, No Vote: How Voter Suppression Is Destroying Our Democracy (2018) by historian Carol Anderson is a ringing condemnation of the rollbacks to Black and Brown Americans’ participation in the vote both before and especially since the 2013 Shelby County vs. Holder Supreme Court decision that eviscerated the Voting Rights Act of 1965. In the 2016 election’s most “misunderstood story,” Anderson shows how “Republican legislatures and governors systemically blocked millions of African Americans, Hispanics, and Asian Americans from the polls.” Faced with demographics that were quickly shrinking the party to permanent minority status, “the Republicans opted to disfranchise rather than reform.”

Eat Your Words: A Fascinating Look at the Language of Food (1999) by Charlotte Foltz Jones was just the recipe for a short, delightful romp through the world of language and food. “Because food is necessary for survival, our entire culture is based on it.” writes Jones in this work suitable for pre-teens through adults. “It’s in our laws, our money, our superstitions, our celebrations, and especially our language.” Calling on her favorite anecdotes, Jones has created a fun-filled and informative book about the history of food-related words and phrases.

Vietnam: The Essential Guide to Customs and Culture (2020) by Geoffrey Murray is a work I read in preparation for an upcoming trip to Southeast Asia. Murray’s smart and concise overview pushed me to recognize how much I had to learn and encouraged me to explore different paths, such as the perspective of the Vietnamese to the Vietnam War as well as the eastern approach to time, where people see it much differently than westerners. 

More to come…

DJB

NOTE: To see which books I read in January, February, March, April, May, June, and July click on the links. You can also read my Ten tips for reading five books a month online.

This Weekly Reader features links to recent articles, blog posts, or books that grabbed my interest or tickled my fancy. I hope you find something that makes you laugh, think, or cry. 

Image of boys reading by Victoria_Borodinova from Pixabay

A Labor Day quiz

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A short quiz for your reading pleasure about labor, the Labor Day holiday, and other assorted items currently in the news. Scroll to the bottom for the answers.

Questions

Question #1: Which U.S. Secretary of Labor was also the first female member of the cabinet?

A. Elaine Chao; B. Hilda Solis; C. Frances Perkins; D. Madeleine Albright

Question #2: What major disaster led to a changing of labor laws in the early 20th century?

A. Hurricane Hugo; B. Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire; C. Great Mississippi River flood of 1927; D. Eruption of Mt. Vesuvius

Question #3: Who brought America weekends, the 8-hour workday, a living wage, and five-day 40-hour work weeks?

A. Henry Ford; B. Theodore Roosevelt; C. Labor Unions; D. Jeff Bezos

Question #4: When and where was the observance of Labor Day started?

A. 1882 in New York City; B. 1895 in Chicago; C. 1902 in Portland, Oregon; D. 1925 in Jackson, Mississippi.

Question #5: What planned community has strong ties to the nation’s first African American Labor Union?

A. Charleston, SC; B. Gary, IN; C. Pullman, IL; D. Oak Ridge, TN

Question #6: Which Secretary of Labor is also a saint in the Episcopal Church?

A. Elizabeth Dole; B. George Schultz; C. Frances Perkins; D. Pauli Murray

Question #7: The U.S. Department of Labor was created on my birthday, March 4th, in the last hours of this president’s term. Who was the president that created the Labor Department?

A. William Howard Taft; B. Franklin Roosevelt; C. U.S. Grant; D. Harry Truman

And now, for two bonus questions dealing with recent events.

Bonus Question: A recent op-ed in a major paper suggested that the classified documents obtained during the search of Mar-a-Lago as shown in the Department of Justice’s explosive photo were just props, because stacks of paper make Trump feel important. Who undercut that argument before the day was out? 

A. Former Attorney General William Barr; B. Current Attorney General Merick Garland; C. Former President Donald Trump; D. Senator Lindsey Graham.

Bonus Extra-Credit Question: Who said the following about the former president?

Donald Trump is a demagogue and a con man. He’s a bully who can never unite America. A race-baiting, xenophobic bigot. He’s a narcissist at a level the country has never seen before. A pathological liar who is utterly amoral. He’s a terrible human being whose statements are simply indefensible and disgusting. His behavior is atrocious and his actions are totally wrong.

A. President Joe Biden in last Thursday’s prime time speech about the threat to democracy; B. Melania Trump; C. Roy Cohn; D. Current Republican members of the U.S. House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate.

Answers

Question #1 – C: Frances Perkins

The driving force behind the Social Security Act was FDR’s Secretary of Labor, Frances Perkins, the first woman to hold a position in the U.S. Cabinet and still the record holder for having the longest tenure in that job. She lasted from 1933 to 1945. While Chao and Solis did hold the position of Labor Secretary, they came many decades after Perkins. Albright was the first female Secretary of State.

Question #2 – B: Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire

Shirtwaists, the fashion a la mode (at the turn of the century), were cotton blouses, requiring no corset or hoops. The demand for the Triangle shirtwaists among working women in New York and beyond was enormous. In the factory, the foremen did everything they could to keep the women sewing to prevent “the interruption of work.”

Triangle Shirtwaist Factory interior after the fire (credit: Department of Labor)

But a horrible fire there on March 25, 1911, killed 146 people — at least 125 of them were immigrant women. Some as young as 15, these seamstresses worked seven days a week, in 13-hour shifts with only a 30-minute lunch period, all for a paltry $6 a week. More than 350,000 people marched in the funeral procession for the Triangle victims. In the next couple of years, New York passed dozens of laws to address the issues that led to the fire. “Many of these reforms — all proposed to protect the health and safety of the American worker — were swept into federal law during the New Deal. “

Question #3 – C: Labor Unions

While Henry Ford, rather than unions, sometimes gets credit for creating the eight-hour workday and the 40-hour work week, Politifact shows that labor unions were working on this issue long before the establishment of the Ford Motor Company. Theodore Roosevelt was a progressive for his time, but…

It took President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s signing of the Fair Labor Standards Act in 1938 for all workers to see limits on working hours — initially 44 hours a week, then phased to 42 and eventually 40 by 1940. “When the FLSA was passed in 1938, Saturday working hours were still common. … Saturday noon was the most frequent ‘payday’ time.”

Given this history, (Henry) Ford is best described as an early adopter of today’s familiar working hours.

Credit: Jewish Women’s Archives

And by the way, Jeff Bezos is working overtime to end all of those things (e.g., the weekend, forty-hour work weeks) for American laborers. This is what happens when you put the oligarchs in charge.

Question #4 – A: 1882 in New York City

According to the Department of Labor, the first Labor Day holiday was celebrated on Tuesday, September 5, 1882, in New York City, “in accordance with the plans of the Central Labor Union. The Central Labor Union held its second Labor Day holiday just a year later, on September 5, 1883.”

Before it was a federal holiday, Labor Day was recognized by labor activists and individual states. After municipal ordinances were passed in 1885 and 1886, a movement developed to secure state legislation. New York was the first state to introduce a bill, but Oregon was the first to pass a law recognizing Labor Day, on February 21, 1887. During 1887, four more states — Colorado, Massachusetts, New Jersey and New York — passed laws creating a Labor Day holiday. By the end of the decade Connecticut, Nebraska and Pennsylvania had followed suit. By 1894, 23 more states had adopted the holiday, and on June 28, 1894, Congress passed an act making the first Monday in September of each year a legal holiday.

Children march in the 1963 NYC Labor Day Parade (credit: Postal Employees Netowrk)

Question #5 – C: Pullman, IL

Pullman is a remarkably intact industrial town of historic buildings and landscapes. Located 13 miles south of downtown Chicago, it was built by industrialist George Pullman and through all the change that has taken place in this small community, it stands today as representative of the heart of the American Labor movement. President Obama designated it as a National Monument in 2015.

Strikes that began in Pullman in 1893 and spread across the country led — in the long arc of history — to the establishment of Labor Day, a 40-hour work week, the weekend, overtime pay, safe workplace conditions, and the right to organize for higher wages and better opportunities. The first African American Union — the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters — had ties to Pullman. The men and women who worked and labored in Pullman — white and black — helped create the American middle class.

Pullman
Pullman (Photo Credit: Cynthia Lynn via National Trust for Historic Preservation)

Question #6 – C: Frances Perkins

Yes, not only was Frances Perkins the first woman to serve in the U.S. Cabinet, but she is also a saint in the Episcopal Church, which celebrates the feast of Frances Perkins, Public Servant and Prophetic Witness, on May 13.

A biographical note about Perkins appears with the proper for this feast in Holy Women, Holy Men: Celebrating the Saints (Church Publishing, 2010). This brief note mentions that Perkins depended on “her faith, her life of prayer, and the guidance of her church for the support she needed to assist the United States and its leadership to face the enormous problems” then challenging the country. While Secretary of Labor, Perkins made a monthly retreat at an Episcopal convent.

Pauli Murray is also an Episcopal saint, but she never served as Secretary of Labor.

Question #7 – A: William Howard Taft

President William Howard Taft signed the act creating the U.S. Department of Labor in his final hours as president on March 4, 1913. For much of the nation’s history, March 4th — which is my birthday — was also inauguration day. With the passage of the 20th amendment in 1933, the date was moved to January 20th.

President William Howard Taft (credit: White House Historical Association)

Bonus Question – C: Donald Trump

Trump supporters are desperately trying to find a way to spin his theft, and subsequent hiding, of classified documents from the U.S. government, so they have said and written all sorts of malarky. Historian Heather Cox Richardson wrote in her Letter from an American that she was “going to do the author of that piece a favor and not link to it in the notes.”

Shortly afterward, Trump tore the ground out from under that argument — and most of the others his supporters were trying to make — by posting a complaint on his Truth Social network about the FBI photo documenting the stolen classified documents. “There seems to be confusion as to the ‘picture’ where documents were sloppily thrown on the floor and then released photographically for the world to see, as if that’s what the FBI found when they broke into my home. Wrong! They took them out of cartons and spread them around on the carpet….” 

Lawyers point out that this is an admission that he had the documents and knew it. 

Bonus Extra Credit Question – D: Current Republican members of the U.S. House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate.

None of those things about the former president came from President Joe Biden’s speech on Thursday evening. Those are the statements of Republicans in the House and Senate, who are now engaged in heavy-duty pearl clutching and pulling out the fainting couches to show how they take deep, deep umbrage at Biden pointing out a threat they recognized five years ago.

One wag on Twitter nailed it.

Give ’em Hell, Joe!

Enjoy your Labor Day holiday.

More to come…

DJB

For additional More to Come posts about Labor Day, see:

Words to chew on

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The Labor Day weekend is a traditional time for the end-of-summer picnic and perhaps one last dip in the pool before it is buttoned up for the winter. School begins, and even the nature of the food we eat changes as we head into fall. Looking ahead we have football parties and tailgates, Octoberfest events, and, of course, Thanksgiving and Christmas feasts on the horizon.

This seasonal transition in culinary habits seemed like a good time to think about the things we eat. And how we talk about food.

Eat Your Words: A Fascinating Look at the Language of Food (1999) by Charlotte Foltz Jones was just the recipe for a short, delightful romp through the world of language and food. “Because food is necessary for survival,” writes Jones, “our entire culture is based on it. It’s in our laws, our money, our superstitions, our celebrations, and especially our language.” Calling on her favorite anecdotes, Jones has created a fun-filled and informative book about the history of food-related words and phrases.

It’s not about nutrition, cooking, recipes, or kitchen safety. It’s a shopping list of curious food etymology, and a menu of the origins of funny-sounding food.

The whimsical illustrations by John O’Brien are aptly described as the dessert.

In seven chapters that satisfy your craving for history, geography, biography, and wordplay, Jones provides her readers with fun-filled-fact after fun-filled-fact. Here’s a smattering to whet your appetite. Did you know that…

  • Caesar salad was originally called aviator salad, because the restaurant where it was first created was near an airfield in Tijuana, Mexico. Later the salad’s creator changed the name to Caesar salad after his brother, who owned the restaurant.
  • Melba toast and Peach Melba were both named in honor of Dame Nellie Melba, an opera singer from Australia.
  • In Gary, Indiana, it is against the law to ride a bus or attend a theatre within four hours after eating garlic.
  • There’s plenty of food on the map: Bacon, Georgia; Cherry, Nebraska; Rice, Minnesota; Hominy, Oklahoma, and more Oranges (Florida, Indiana, and Texas) than you can shake off a tree.
  • Bread and butter pickles are not actually made from bread and butter. These sweet pickles were first created around 1900, and the homemaker who created them sold them at a roadside stand to get money to provide her family with bread and butter.
  • A peanut is not a pea and it’s not a nut. It’s a legume — a bean.

Near the end of the book, Jones has a chapter entitled Talking Turkey, which looks at the origins of our favorite terms and sayings and begins with this delightful introduction:

Friends usually get along like two peas in a pod, making life a bowl of cherries. They’re as sweet as honey and act nuttier than a fruitcake. Then one goes bananas and drops the other like a hot potato. They both walk on eggshells and act as cool as a cucumber as long as one has a bone to pick. But once they sit down to chew the fat or talk turkey, things are keen as mustard once again.

While most of these terms came into the language gradually, that’s not always the case. Consider “couch potato” — a person who spends a lot of time watching television — for example. According to Jones, Tom Iacino from California coined the term in 1976. “Couch potato” was then trademarked. “A club was formed, a newsletter was published, and merchandise (such as T-shirts and dolls) was sold.”

As you think of the feasts on your schedule this fall, be sure to “put your money where your mouth is.” Should you be moving to a new home, carry in salt first to ensure wealth. Eating bread crusts will make your hair curly.

As your head hits the pillow tonight and you want to dream in color, eat three almonds before you go to sleep. Should you want those dreams to be of your future spouse, sleep with a piece of wedding cake under your pillow. (Just don’t call on me to clean up your mess.)

And, of course, take all of this with a grain of salt.

More to come…

DJB

Image by Public Co from Pixabay.

Festival jams

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One of the treats of attending bluegrass and acoustic music festivals is when groups of musicians who don’t play together on a regular basis gather on stage to make music. It isn’t always pretty, but sometimes magic happens.

Last year I wrote about some of these special moments in the post Festival Favorites. Now, with the summer festival season winding down, I thought it would be fun to take in some jams — most from 2022 but one or two older gems — at festivals and other acoustic music venues.

Of course, it would be too easy in these collaborations to just play standard material, as so many of these talented musicians would ask, “Where’s the fun in that?!” That’s one reason these jams regularly feature music from genres other than the standard bluegrass fare. The finales at eTown, for instance, are always a mash-up of the musical guests playing on that week’s show and the music is often unexpected, as when Molly Tuttle and The Infamous Stringdusters join hosts Nick and Helen Forster for this unique take on the Eurythmics‘ hit song Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This).

Chris Thile from Punch Brothers, can play just about anything, so it isn’t a surprise when Thile, Sarah Jarosz, and Nathaniel Smith from Watchhouse on cello cover of The Beatles Drive My Car, from the August 5, 2022, concert at the Mountain Winery in Saratoga, California.

That clip came from the American Acoustic Tour featuring Watchhouse (fka Mandolin Orange), Punch Brothers, and Jarosz. From that same tour is a beautiful cover of Bobby Charles‘ I Must Be in a Good Place Now.

Those two bands plus Jarosz play a lovely version of the Watchhouse tune Wildfire from the same tour. As I wrote in 2020, Wildfire is a tune that fits in our troubled times.

Civil war came and civil war went
Brother fought brother, the south was spent
But its true demise was hatred passed down through the years
And it should have been different, it could have been easy
But pride has a way of holding too firm to history
Then it burns like wildfire

Merlefest has always been a festival where one can see great collections of amazing musicians doing their thing together. This video was recorded on April 30, 2022, at the Creekside Stage at Merlefest, where Sam Bush led friends of the blind guitarist Doc Watson and his son Merle in a set called “Memories of the Watson Family.” Sam’s introduction to Nashville Blues describes how he learned to manage a “cluster jam” from Doc.

This classic jam from the 1991 Merlefest features the late Tony Rice leading the band alongside Sam Bush, Bela Fleck, Jerry Douglas, Mark O’Connor, and Mark Schatz.

Fast forward some thirty years and Bela Fleck’s My Bluegrass Heart tour is featuring some of those same elder statesmen, along with many of the best young players in the business. Featured is a rip-roaring version of the old Jimmy Martin hit Tennessee, with a spirited lead by the incomparable Billy Strings.

Grey Fox is another of the country’s top-notch bluegrass festivals, and I’ve included a jam from 2019 with Billy Strings and Molly Tuttle doing one of my favorites, Sittin’ On Top of the World.

To end this post, I’m going back to a gem from 2012 at the 25th anniversary of Merlefest. Sam Bush and the Sam Bush Band had a great opening set, but when they brought out Derek Trucks, his wife Susan Tedeschi, John Cowan, and Bela Fleck it was magical. Luckily, there’s a great video of the entire set of three tunes on You Tube. Take a look at Sam Bush’s face at about 2:06 when Trucks plays an amazing lick. That’s how everyone felt.

Have a great Labor Day weekend and enjoy some music!

More to come…

DJB

Image: Sam Bush and his band jam with Derek Trucks and Susan Tedeschi at Merlefest 2012.

Don’t mess with the archivists and librarians

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It has been an interesting week. If you follow the news and are interested in

  • the key role of archivists and librarians in protecting our democracy,
  • the real history of debt relief (and how student loan relief fits right in with what governments have been doing for centuries), and
  • President Biden’s speech calling out the very clear fascism of today’s Republicans,

then read on to see what a number of historians and legal commentators have been saying.

Also, scroll to the end to see a short video that gives hope for our future, through engagement. It may be the best four minutes you’ll spend today.

Librarians and archivists don’t mess around

As historian Heather Cox Richardson and a host of others have pointed out, you don’t mess with archivists and librarians.

The former president missed the day in high school civics class when so many learned that “(w)ithout the preservation of the records of government, and without access to them, you can’t have an informed population, and without an informed population, you lack one of the basic tools to preserving democracy.” The former president and his supporters have attacked the National Archives and its staff as part of the “partisan witch hunt” against him. Nothing could be further from the truth. A Washington Post story on August 27th looked at the unprecedent attacks on this national treasure.

Trump’s recent actions have whipped his followers into a fervor against the Archives, and he has empowered some of his most politically combative allies to represent him in negotiations with the agency. Former presidents’ representatives have typically been lawyers, historians or family members without clear political agendas. The representatives usually deal with issues such as negotiating privilege claims, setting up presidential libraries or researching presidential memoirs.…But this was yet another norm that Trump broke. 

The affidavit showed very clearly, even in redacted form, that the former President was stonewalling the requests stretching over seven months from the National Archives to return highly sensitive materials and all the materials that belong to the U.S. government. As Richardson wrote in her August 26th Letters from an American,

On February 9, 2022, the National Archives and Records Administration (what did I say about archivists?) told the DOJ that after seven months of negotiations, on January 18 it had received 15 boxes of material that former president Trump had held at Mar-a-Lago. Those boxes contained “highly classified documents,” including some at the very most secret level of our intelligence: those involving our spies and informants. 

In those initial 15 boxes, FBI personnel found 184 classified documents. Sixty-seven were labeled CONFIDENTIAL, 92 were SECRET, 25 were TOP SECRET. Some were marked SCS, FISA, ORCON, NOFORN, and SI, the very highest levels of security, involving human intelligence, foreign surveillance, intelligence that cannot be shared with foreign governments, and intelligence that is compartmented to make sure no one has full knowledge of what is in it. The former president had made notes on “several” of the documents.

Trump is in serious trouble, writes Richardson, “…and so are the rest of us.” 

When one fake meltdown doesn’t work, try another (the Fauci and debt editions)

But if one faux outrage doesn’t end the focus on Trump’s troubles, then Republicans have plenty of others they will call upon.

When someone you know says that student loan debt forgiveness is unconstitutional or some similar malarky, just point them to the history

President Biden’s decision to forgive student loan debts was a special favorite of the right-wing noise machine, and one brimming with hypocrisy and bad history. Unfortunately, many in the media went along with the Republican talking points.

Zachary D. Carter, writing in Slate, has an excellent article on the long history of loan forgiveness in the U.S., for those looking for the history.

In 1920, the world’s most famous economist, John Maynard Keynes, was digging through old books on the economy of the ancient world, when he discovered something startling. All his life he had been taught that civilization depended on ironclad financial certainty. Without a stable currency and dependable debt contracts, commerce could not exist. Governments that meddled in such matters were thought to be asking for social chaos.

But the documents he perused on Ancient Greece, Rome, Babylon, Assyria, and Persia showed him something else entirely. Throughout history, political leaders had abolished debts and managed the value of their currencies—another way to revise debts—as routine matters of government policy. Keynes was electrified. 

And Carter ends with the following:

Biden’s student debt relief initiative is no wild, unprecedented idea. Governments pay for education and eliminate unsustainable debts. That is how the world has worked for centuries.

Robert Hubbell wrote on his August 25th Today’s Edition newsletter about what’s missing in those attacks.

The Editorial Board of the Washington Post seemed to take personal offense over the plan in an editorial entitled, Biden’s student loan forgiveness is an expensive, regressive mistake….

While the Post’s objection is technically true, it is also true for the following subsidies and credits: Trump’s 2017 tax cut for millionaires, oil company subsidies, export subsidies for US manufacturers, auto industry subsidies, lower tax rates for hedge fund managers (“carried interest deduction”), 100% deductibility for yachts purchased for “business purposes,” and deduction for 100% of the future depreciation for private jets in their first year of service.

All of the above subsidies, credits, and deductions are regressive because—as the Post notes—“the broader tax base is mostly made up of workers” who are not millionaires, who do not manage hedge funds, who do not own oil wells, and who do not purchase yachts or private jets. And yet, the Post and others reserve peevish indignation for a program that helps middle- and lower-income earners who took a chance by investing in their futures and themselves.

But Dan Fromkin at Press Watch was ready, as he wrote on his blog on August 26th:

A friend of mine emailed me about this New York Times article by Jonathan Weisman and Maggie Astor. He was furious that it made the glib assumption that people in “roles that do not require college degrees” represent a constituency opposed to student loan relief.

Those roles “are filled with people who have college degrees or, more to the point, began attending college, racked up debt, and had to drop out to work to pay off their loans,” my friend wrote.

The article cited two prominent labor unions, but my friend noted that it “didn’t mention whether the union has a position on the bill.”

So I did some digging. And lo and behold:

Looking for Democratic constituencies who oppose student loan relief, the Times reporters “namecheck two unions…who strongly support it.” Whoops!

Biden and the White House were prepared as well. Biden gave a fiery speech defending the program, while the White House Twitter account named names.

In her August 27th Letters from an American, Richardson wrote that

Biden’s calling out of today’s radical Republicans mirrors the moment on June 21, 1856, when Representative Anson Burlingame of Massachusetts, a member of the newly formed Republican Party, stood up in Congress to announce that northerners were willing to take to the battlefield to defend their way of life against the southerners who were trying to destroy it. Less than a month before, Burlingame’s Massachusetts colleague Senator Charles Sumner had been brutally beaten by a southern representative for disparaging slavery, and Burlingame was sick and tired of buying sectional peace by letting southerners abuse the North. Enough, he said, was enough. The North was superior to the South in its morality, loyalty to the government, fidelity to the Constitution, and economy, and northerners were willing to defend their system, if necessary, with guns.

Richardson ended her letter by noting that although Burlingame’s speech is now forgotten, it “was once widely considered one of the most important speeches in American history. It marked the moment when northerners shocked southerners by calling them out for what they were, and northerners rallied to Burlingame’s call.”

I know from experience that when I went to college (one year at a private university, the other three at a public institution), the government covered much more of the cost of higher education than is the case today. Where we once all supported education through our taxes as a value to the country as a whole, now — thanks to the anti-tax fervor of the billionaire-backed Republican party — the financial burden falls directly on the student, even though we still benefit as a country from having an educated populace.

Winter is coming (for authoritarians)

Things appear to be changing across several fronts. And don’t forget that the January 6th committee will reconvene in September.

Finally, I encourage you to take the time to watch this beer commercial. Yes, I said beer commercial. It may be the best four minutes you’ll spend this week.

Have a good Labor Day weekend.

More to come…

DJB

This Weekly Reader features links to recent articles, blog posts, or books that grabbed my interest or tickled my fancy. I hope you find something that makes you laugh, think, or cry. 

Image: Rotunda of the National Archives in Washington, D.C., credit National Archives.